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Ted Scarritt runs Perdido Beach Services, which rents umbrellas, boogie boards and beach chairs. His business is off by 80 percent, he says. He planned to expand his business, buying a 50-foot catamaran to take people on sailing excursions. So far, he hasn't had much business on it.

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf, Ted Scarritt had a sinking feeling in his stomach.

Once the first mate on a boat that serviced oil rigs, Scarritt was aware of what a blowout could mean.

But his days in that business were long gone, he told himself. Technology had improved by leaps and bounds since then. A rig like the Deepwater Horizon wouldn't even have been possible back when he worked in the Gulf rig fields.

The proprietor of an Orange Beach company that rents beach chairs and umbrellas, Scarritt tried to ignore the premonition. He swallowed hard, he said, and put it out of his mind.

One hundred days later, Scarritt said, business at his company, Perdido Beach Services, is off by 80 percent.

His newer venture, a sailboat charter business that he called "his dream," was shut down before it ever really got started.

The seeds of that dream were sown in the early '90s, when Scarritt lived in Hawaii. An avid surfer -- his work clothes still include flip-flops and swimming trunks -- he'd headed to the islands for the waves and ended up paying the bills by working on catamarans, the double-hulled sailboats typical of Polynesia.

He became obsessed with getting his own catamaran and starting a similar business on the Gulf.

"He talked about it all the time. Even before he ever got the boat, he was telling everyone about it," said 19-year-old Stephanie Kaiser, a friend of Scarritt's and a Perdido Beach Services employee for four summers running.

After scouring the global market, Scarritt found the boat of he wanted in Albany, N.Y. To get it to the Alabama coast and ready for the summer season, he and his crew had to pick it up in the dead of winter. A video of the trip shows Scarritt and his crew following a tugboat down the Hudson River as it broke the ice in front of them.

Once the catamaran was ready, Scarritt launched a marketing blitz. He took his clients -- hoteliers and condo owners -- out on the Gulf in the hopes they would steer patrons his way.

Nancy Meadlock, owner and manager of Perdido Beach Resort, said she passed on the trip -- she said she's not a water person -- but heard rave reviews from those who went in her stead.

Still, Meadlock said she harbored reservations. "I thought it was a dangerous idea," she said. "It was a big investment, and there are lots of things to do already on the water."

Nonetheless, she gave Scarritt room on her hotel's dock for his 53-foot boat named Wild Hearts.

"I knew he was a hard worker and he had good people working for him," she said.

Then the tarballs started washing in.

"It was a beautiful, sunny day," Scarritt said of the oil's first landfall in Orange Beach. "Not a cloud in the sky. Little wind, if any. The water was crystal-clear blue."

With only a few tours to its credit, Wild Hearts sits on Cotton Bayou, its sails tucked away.

Despite all, Scarritt remains relentlessly optimistic.

"I'm not going to go out of business," he said. "I'm one of the lucky ones. I really believe that BP is going to honor their obligations when it's all said and done."